More importantly, we are making it possible for you to participate in the protest. There are two options: a “Stop Censorship” ribbon and a full blackout. The blackout portion will be in effect January 18 from 8am to 8pm EST, while the ribbon will be displayed until January 24. Here’s how to join in:

1. Go to Settings → Protest SOPA/PIPA in your dashboard.
2. Select if you want to join the blackout or show a ribbon.
3. If you choose to join the blackout, you can edit the message that will be shown on your site during the blackout.
4. Preview what your protest will look like.
5. Click “Save Changes” button to activate your protest.

That’s it! Easy-peasy activism right at your fingertips.

The “Stop Censorship” ribbon will display in the upper corner of your site and links to americancensorship.org. It will display until January 24, 2012 (the Senate vote date).

If you choose to do the blackout in addition to the ribbon, then we will black out your site from 8am to 8pm EST along with the official strike. You can customize the message that will appear on your blacked-out site to tell people why this issue is important to you. Your site will return to just displaying the ribbon after the strike is over.

For those wishing to do this manually, if you are using the WordPress.com CSS Extra option or the full version of WordPress, you can do it manually by changing your stylesheet to feature:

html {background:black;}
body {display:none;}

If you are using the self-hosted version of WordPress, you may use the following:

If you are on WordPress.com and don’t have the CSS Extra feature and you wish to participate, you can use a banner instead. You can use the graphics from my National Blackout Day of Protest article or these updated ones which mention PIPA here. Hopefully, WordPress.com will come up with an option to make this easier, but until then, let your voice be heard anyway.

SOPA could effect ALL the world’s web users, not just American users. Unfortunately, so many people and organisations are only focusing on the American audience, leaving the rest of the world ignorant of the potential detrimental effects of SOPA.

Almost every Australian I’ve spoken to has no idea SOPA exists.

Why not inform all who will be effected instead of just 0.5% of the world’s countries?